


One For The Money, Two For The Show

by roachpatrol



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 14:38:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve probably put palm to a solid fourth of your cohort’s crop of enactors by now. Certainly anyone over teal with big horns and a talent for looming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One For The Money, Two For The Show

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it's one for the money,  
> Two for the show,  
> Three to get ready,  
> Now go, cat, go.  
> \--Blue Suede Shoes

“Take Fifteen,” the Directorbot buzzes, “on my mark.” You want to put a claw through its lens. Instead you and your partner trade weary glances, square off at your corners, and ready yourselves for the next round.

“Action,” the bot squalls, and your partner is a whirl of deadly motion, her twin swords swooping and curving through the air, faster and faster. The dummies in the ring scream and fall and die, and she screams too, louder, louder, her voice a mad shredded thing.

Your mark. You cross stage left, dart in under one blade, catch the next on your claws, spin, hip-check, disarm her. She hits the mat with a meaty thud, and the dummies lurch wounded away. 

She’s gasping under your hands and you are so, so tired. In her eyes is the same resigned weariness you feel crawling bile-slow up your own optical cords. 

“You came,” she says. 

“I’ll always come for you,” you say, hoarse, soft, _desperate_ , and you raise your bloodied paws to her face. 

“That’s a wrap,” the Director says, and clicks, satisfiedly, off. 

“Oh, thank god,” your co-lead sighs with deep relief, and she shoves you off her with undisguised eagerness. For your own part you’re relieved too; she’s a lovely girl, very professional, rather funny if you get her on the subject of historical docuramas, and you are thoroughly sick of each and every contour of her face. You are tired and aching and long past ready to take someone’s head off at the shoulders.

“See you fur the post purr-duction,” you tell her, and she waves you off with a perfunctory smile. She’s got a demanding kismesis waiting for her in her trailerblock, you’re pretty sure, and all the fake gore the two of you have been wading through probably worked her into a hell of an appetite for some real strife. 

And you: you need something real too. 

Your trailerblock is too small, too clean, too metal. You long for rough sandy stone, for the comforting pungency of tanning fluid and draining blood, for hot muscle-meat. Instead you get a six-by-six-by-six detachable plastisteel block at the hindend of the mediaship, a traplike recuperacoon, and a shelf to drape your clothes over. Even your pelt collection laid across the small blank floor can’t make this glorified kennel a proper space to live in. Not really live.

The stories you are assigned to are just so _fucking stupid._ You got into media enactment to really make a difference, you got into media enactment because you love to act and you love stories and you love romance, but you’re small and you have cute little horns and big green eyes and bitty witty _purrrrrrr_ ecious paws. You’ve probably put palm to a solid fourth of your cohort’s crop of enactors by now. Certainly anyone over teal with big horns and a talent for looming. You’re Alternia’s newest silver-screen conciliator, everyone’s darling diamond crush, and it’s just _so_ FUCKING _STUPID_.

You sink your teeth into the rubbery, unsatisfying lip of your recuperacoon, and give the cheap rounded outer wall a few frustrated kicks. You want to eviscerate something. You want to cry messily. You want a good strife, you want a good meal, you want a good role, you want something that doesn’t come spooned to you out of a fucking tin. 

You aren’t entitled to a tidbit of it. You’ve signed yourself away to media enactment and you do what they tell you and say what they tell you and touch who they tell you. The very concept of making a difference is a stupid little dream for a dumb little girl and it’s all been chewed to pulp anyway. All you want anymore is to get through another night without putting your claws through someone’s throat. 

The door hisses gently open. Enmaddened, you launch yourself from the recuperacoon’s rim, claws extended, roaring threat. This is _your space_ , you are _off work_. 

You wrap around your assailant’s head like a scarf of death, you kick and you bite and you hiss, determined to render him down to pieces. Intruder, aggravation, your rightful prey! Instead of dying, he just sits, very carefully, down on the floor, and folds his hands on his lap.

“Nepeta,” he says quietly. “Desist. This is unbecoming.”

“Equius?” you ask, through a mouthful of ear. It comes out a blood-snarled _‘effuffs?’_ , and he—your moirail—rumbles out a deep fond laugh. 

“I earned a few night’s leave,” he says. “The front has been advanced through the most vexing of obstructions. They could afford my absence. Please release my ear, that’s very painful.”

You let go, a little ashamed, and lick the welling blue from his flesh once or twice, till it seals. The taste of him is all high stony peaks and cold metal, is blissfully familiar. 

He shrugs you into his lap.

“I am glad you are maintaining proper oral hygene in my absence,” he says, checking your teeth. “You have retained your admirable penetration ability.” His fingers are like shards of mountain, huge and brutal and brittle. He touches your mouth so delicately, your horns, your hair, then takes your hands and clucks his tongue over your split thumbclaw. 

“This should have been treated,” he says. 

“Looks better on film when I’m a little rough around the edges,” you explain. “The bruises can just get painted on, but authentic damage is better.”

His big hands spasm, an earthquake tremor that rattles you to your horns, and then he is still again.

“It is not better,” he says frostily. Beads of sweat pearl his temples. “Not for any given value of better nor for any comparison to an inferior state. How are you to be expected to deliver your best service to your superiors when they neglect to keep you in the best condition?”

You close your eyes, groping for the last shredded string of your patience. “Equius,” you say. The name sounds good on your tongue, a life-line, and you say it again, “ _Equius_ ,” and your voice cracks into a thin high whine. It’s all you can do not to bite him again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and ushers you carefully up against his chest. You tuck your face into the damp, Equius-scented crook of his throat and you breathe him in. 

“Do you hate sharing me?” you ask. Your voice is shamefully small. “Are you mad?”

He shrugs, an avalanche of hard muscle. “I am proud,” he says. “You are excelling at your chosen field, and appreciated for your contributions. What more could anyone ask of their profession, or that of their loved one’s?”

“It’s stupid,” you say after a long while. “It’s not a purrofession, it’s a farce, and it’s all just so fucking stupid, all of it-- pointless and meaningless and _dumb and fake_ , there’s no _heart_ to any of it. There’s nothing _real_ , Equius.”

“You can’t see what’s real in all this,” he says, “because it’s _you_.” His voice is a low scrape in the cavern of his chest. “That’s why they love you so. That’s what they see. That’s why you’re the star. It’s you, Nepeta. You’re their center.” 

You growl at this, knowing you’re being petulant and not caring: “I want to be _your_ center.”

He snorts. “You never stopped.”

You squirm up against him. “Every organ I possess,” you mewl, all throbbing and pitch-perfect, you have these stupid lines etched behind your retinal orbs, “every cell of my body, every drop of my blood, burns white-hot in supplication to you, would you only take me up as worthy of your regard. Only let me be the light that guides you through the darkness, only let me be the brand that burns away your sins, and I shall be yours and yours only for all my nights.”

Equius baps your nose with the very tip of his index pad.

“Thank you, madam,” he says dryly, “but I would much prefer my proud Leijon instead. I know she’s in there somewhere.”

You sling an arm around the massive curve of his throat, rest your palm over the cool slow beat of his blood, and you sigh. 

He reaches one hand up, a hand the size of mountains, planets, your whole thorax, and he gently cups it over your wild head, your tangled thoughts. Sheltered like this, you are safe, you are finally shielded and at peace.

“I’m here,” you say, and close your eyes in the cool blue darkness. “I’m home.”


End file.
